| President Richard M. Nixon suffered from the ultimate form of paranoia – he eavesdropped on himself. Not content with keeping a meticulous written record of his presidency – perhaps the most exhaustively documented of any US president – he installed a voice activated taping system in February 1971, first in his Oval Office within the White House, and then at in the Cabinet Room, Camp David and on the White House telephones. His overt purpose had been to supplement what scribes had written after each event with a recording of each significant event as it was occurring. History would not be read as much as replayed. |
| Nixon’s ingenuity proved to be his undoing. The very tapes that he had planned would provide irrefutable evidence of his capability as a world leader and confound his critics became an impeachable indictment of his moral insolvency and a fatal weapon in the hands of his political foes. The transcripts of presidential conversations, made public during the Watergate hearings in 1973-74 that ultimately brought down his presidency, revealed a flawed, foul-mouthed individual who controlled the world’s most powerful country but could not control his own tongue. The published transcripts - perforated with excisions marked ‘expletive deleted’ – left readers in those demure days speculating about the missing obscenities. |
| The patient have now been rewarded; those obscenities have been revealed, as has coincidentally the name of Mr Mark Felt, once Nixon’s deputy chief at the FBI, as ‘Deep Throat’ – the hitherto secret source of confidential leaks on Watergate to the two journalists of The Washington Post. [EXTRACT] |
| Published in DAWN 25 July 2005, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
|
